Nowhere do we find more interesting ruins telling of past grandeur than in Asia. We think of Rome as old; of Greece as older; but in Mesopotamia are ruins far older than those of Greece and Rome. There are the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, so often mentioned in the Bible. Both are old, but lately explorers have found yet older ruins dating back six or seven thousand years. And these are not ruins of small and unimportant places, but of grand cities, whose people were already civilized, with fixed laws, curious religions, and many arts and industries. Nowhere in the world have ruins of older cities been found, and it is believed that the people who built them were yellow Mongolians. In Asia most of the great religions were born. The oldest religious systems of which we know were those of Mesopotamia. In India Buddhism began. Buddha was a teacher who felt that the old religion of India, Brahmanism, was wrong. So he taught a new religion. There are more believers in Buddhism to-day than in any other religion. It is the chief religion of China, Japan, Tibet, Southeastern Asia, and Ceylon; but in India itself, where Buddha lived and taught, the people are _not_ Buddhists. In China there arose a great teacher, Confucius. He taught no religion, but to-day there are Confucian temples all through China. Judaism, the worship of Jehovah by the Jews, began in Asia. There, too, in Judæa also, Christianity was born. Christ dwelt and taught there, and there the first Christian churches were founded. But just as Buddha’s land is not Buddhist, so Palestine to-day is not Christian. It is a part of the Mohammedan world. Mohammedanism, too, is Asiatic, beginning in Arabia almost thirteen hundred years ago. Perhaps the original home of man, Asia has certainly been the first seat of civilization, and the cradle of religions. XIII. CHINESE. Perhaps four hundred and twenty million people dwell in the Chinese Empire and are called Chinese. They are not, however, all _true_ Chinese. When the Chinese (or their ancestors) moved eastward into what is now China, four thousand or more years ago, they found many different tribes living there. Some of these were driven forth to seek new homes; many remained and have mixed and mingled with the Chinese.